But that had been before the interminable waste of the Grass War and the long train of young women and men in front of my desk with the trinkets they thought would give them a chance of not becoming food for crows in a field somewhere.

Nadia Bulkin is a Master’s student in the International Politics program at American University in Washington, DC. She studies post-colonialism and governance; "Princess Courage" is dedicated to William McKinley. Her other fiction can be found in the new anthology Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters, ChiZine, Fantasy Magazine , and Strange Horizons. For more information, visit nadiabulkin.wordpress.com.